Characters are not created by writers. They pre-exist and have to be found.

Almost everyone admits to hunger during the Opera.... Hunger is so exalting that during a last act you practically levitate.

Wariness had driven away poetry; from hesitating to feel came the moment when you no longer could.

No, it is not only our fate but our business to lose innocence, and once we have lost that, it is futile to attempt a picnic in Eden.

Dialogue should convey a sense of spontaneity but eliminate the repetitiveness of real talk.

Love of privacy - perhaps because of the increasing exactions of society - has become in many people almost pathological.

The most striking fault in work by young or beginning novelists, submitted for criticism, is irrelevance--due either to infatuation or indecision. To direct such an author's attention to the imperative of relevance is certainly the most useful--and possibly the only--help that can be given.